The grand old lady is back.

[steelfixer]

Hi all

Well I made the effort and crawled out of bed at 3.30am this morning to see my favorite planet.

I was awoken completely as I met the freezing cold air on the way to open the obs roof.

That rearly was a shock to the system and I started to doubt my sanity.

All faith was quickly restored though as the beatiful image of Saturn arced into view.

I then spent a marvelous two hours taking AVI after AVI of her.

As she was pretty low in the sky and even worse directly over the town center the atmospherics were horrendous.

Still the heat rising off the town had an interesting effect on the colours.

I have attached the best of the photos.

Hope you like them.

Graham.

[Clayton]

Very nice Graham

Most except number 5 have been either over exposed or brightened up a bit too much though? But still a lovely sight.

[steelfixer]

Hi Clayton

They are bit bright arn't they.

Its is how they came out. I just put the AVI's throught Registax 5.

Thats it no PS or any other processing.

Thanks

Graham

[Ponoobersie]

That was well worth getting up at 3am for! some very nice shots there Graham well done, hopefully when I turn crazy I might venture out at silly o'clock too ...hehe

[Russe]

Just can't convince myself... Nice pictures!!

[steelfixer]

Just make sure when you do everything is not covered in Ice.

It does tend to wake you up in a hurry.

[Ponoobersie]

Russe, where did you get that forcast?

[Russe]

7Timer! - numerical weather forecast for anywhere over the world

Select ASTRO!

Worked well for me in the last 2/12!!

[Zul]

Looks really great!!

[Clayton]

Can you post a stacked image, straight out of Registax with no wavelets, adjustments or resizing??

[Charon]

Great photos Graham. Thanks for the weather link Russe.

[northcanadian]

Nice...like 4 and 5 because the banding shows...good work

cheers

[Sp@ce_d]

Nice one.. an old friend, the first planet I looked at through a scope.. Too right is was rather cold. I was just going to bed as you were getting up... just tooo frozen to stay up anymore. Plus I had a couple of close calls slipping over right near the scope!

[Beulah]

Nice to see her again. You've got some good information there despite Saturn's low position.

Thanks for the astro fix, I haven't been out there for ages with a scope, have to wait another couple of weeks.

[steelfixer]

Many thanks for the kind words all.

Clayton No probs I will run another one through and post it up for you the next time I fire up the obs computers.

[Clayton]

Thanks, I'll be waiting

[Vega]

.... and she's looking sexier than ever, showing off more of her rings this year

[steve10r]

Awesome photos :headbang

[teh_feckerer]

Beautiful images. Really glad to see Saturn back in relatively sensible times.

Interesting to see the colour changes on the images. Really great details thought.

[steelfixer]

Thanks folks

Ted - I think the colour changes are due to the heat haze rising up from the town.

[teh_feckerer]

Thanks folks

Ted - I think the colour changes are due to the heat haze rising up from the town.

Sorry for the late reply, does the heat rising add to atmospheric retraction or something? Not having a significant town nearby i avoid this sort of thing.

[steelfixer]

Hi Ted

The position of Saturn in these photos ment she was right above the Dock area in the town.

As the heat and general pollution from this industrial area rises it creates some pretty horrendous seeing conditions.

Think of a heat haze you see comming off a road in the summer then add some coloured smoke for good measure.

Thanks

Graham.